30 Aug 2014

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Mahatma Gandhi

Meet Your Meat

“The cruelties of modern factory farming are so severe that you don't have to be a vegetarian or animal rights activist to find the conditions intolerable and a violation of the human-animal bond.” John Robbins

“Factory farming wasn't born or advanced out of a need to produce more food — to 'feed the hungry' — but to produce it in a way that is profitable for agribusiness companies. Factory farming is all about money. That is the reason the factory farm system is failing and won't work over the long term: it's created a food industry whose primary concern isn't feeding people. Does anyone really doubt that the corporations that control the vast majority of animal agriculture in America are in it for the profit? In most industries, that's a perfectly good driving force. But when the commodities are animals, the factories are the earth itself, and the products are physically consumed, the stakes are not the same, and the thinking can't be the same.” Jonathan Safran Foer

“Even if you don't work in the meatpacking industry or eat meat, you are not immune to the consequences of the practices of the animal agribusinesses with which you share the planet. Meat production is a leading cause of every significant form of enviromental damage: air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, erosion, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and depletion of fresh water.” Melanie Joy

“The vast majority of the animals we eat are not, as those in the animal agribusiness industry would have us believe, 'contented cows' and 'happy hens' lazing amid grassy fields and open barnyards. They are not sleeping in spacious stalls with fresh hay. From the moment they are born, these animals are kept in intensive confinement where they may suffer from disease, exposure to extreme temperatures, severe overcrowding, violent handling, and even psychosis. Despite what the prevailing imagery of farm animals suggests, small, family-run farms are largely a thing of the past; today the animals are in massive 'confined animal feeding operations,' or CAFOs (sometimes called 'factory farms'), where they reside until they are shipped to the slaughterhouse.” Melanie Joy

Le Sang des bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949)

“The meat industry understands that the more people know about what happens on the kill floor, the less meat they're likely to eat.” Michael Pollan

“Human beings cannot be human (much less humane) under the conditions of a factory farm or slaughterhouse. It's the most perfect workplace alienation in the world right now. Unless you consider what the animals experience.” Jonathan Safran Foer

VA Sub Pop 5 Tape (Sub Pop, 1980)

All Night Movies – Slaughterhouse

“A diet based on industrial fast food is contributing mightily to escalating rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. And factory farms are contributing massively to global warming, deforestation, and species extinction.” John Robbins

“It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. (…) Deciding what to eat (and what to toss overboard) is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values — or betray them — lies in the food we put on our plates.” Jonathan Safran Foer

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?” Jonathan Safran Foer

29 Aug 2014

The Sterilles
“The Sterilles (Aan Leadingham, Dina Press-Price and Ashley Stewart) started out as an all-girl punk band and had a radio hit early on in their career with 'I'm on the Rag'. Poor management and bad business practices took away any profit from that experience.” Official site

The Sterilles On The Rag LP (Screaming Skull, 1987)

The Sterilles – Shopping
Endless thanks to Nathan for uploading the whole record back in the day.

24 Aug 2014

Originally posted Sep 5, 2010
“Reno's all girl band were born to a family of ceramic lizards and have been around since about October 1980. These girls range in age from 16 to 18. Hell-n-52, Jone-9, Bess-147, and Lynn-2 months. They play Ozark music on a variety of instruments: Lynn-spoons and mandolin, Bess-fiddle and kazoo, Jone-washboard and harmonica, and Hell-n-banjo and jug. MUSICAL INFLUENCES: Molly Hatchett, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Lynard Skybard and Aretha Franklin. Just jivin'. SOME OF THEIR PASTIMES INCLUDE going on dates with people who eat glass, collecting empty deodorant containers, and lighting people's underwear on fire.” Not So Quiet On The Western Front

Not So Quiet On The Western Front zine, 1982 [CD inlay, 1999]

“This band hails from Reno, Nevada and is composed of four teenage girls that do mostly all hardcore material. The nine songs on this tape are definitely not of the slam'n'thrash variety but are more akin to art damage, sorta like Flipper. Anyway everything here is original and well, kinda weird. Broken-up rhythms and strange singing abound but this stuff really does grab ya after repeated listenings. Also the lyrics are top notch and these girls definitely have something to say! They deal with subjects such as high school, Cuban refugees, and the all important question about drug use. What ya got here is a fairly rewarding tape from a rebellious crew of teenage girls ready to shake up the system.” Frankie DeAngelis (Ripper #7, May 1982)

Lynn of Reno's The Wrecks. Touch & Go #19

“The Wrecks were one of the first all-female hardcore punk bands. They rocked Reno from 1980 to 1982. Two of the members went on to form the still-active Imperial Teen: Lynn Truell and Jone Stebbins. Lynn was just named one of the 100 best alternative-rock drummers by Spin magazine, which neglected her time in The Wrecks but included her drumming in The Dicks and Sister Double Happiness.” Mark Robison

“She [Bessie Oakley] also happens to be the very definition of a maverick pioneer, if not in terms of settling the land and breaking ponies, then at least culturally speaking. She and her all-girl Hardcore band The Wrecks were matter-of-fact Riot Grrrl before the first people to call themselves 'Riot Grrrls' were out of grade school! I might be forgetting one but I can’t think of another all-girl, or even girl-centric band, in that early American Hardcore era.” Jason Traeger

Jone Stebbins of The Wrecks. Cari L. Marvelli

“Bessie and Jone [Stebbins] weren’t only known for being Wrecks either. They were equally well regarded and probably just as well known for their work as the co-editors of one of the most engaging and well loved fanzines of the time, a brilliant, funny, and charming off-the-cuff serial work of art known as Paranoia 'the magazine for blind and illiterate punks'.” Jason Traeger

Paranoia #1, 1980

“Tesco Vee: How's been the response to your tape?Bessie: Good enough for a homo-zine-new wave chronicle like Touch & Go to interview us I guess. Actually pretty good – I think it's cuz we put alot into it.Lynn: So far pretty good. We get a couple of letters a week for tapes.Jone: Pretty good, I'm surprised. We've been getting good reviews except those that say we're an art damage band. Fuck yeah we sound like a combination of Rik L Rik and the Slits and David Bowie… I'm sure!Hell-n: Great – I even saw one in Recycled Records.” Touch & Go #19

“You probably won't be able to get this garage-punk gem anymore, but suffice to say this nine song cassette is both funny and wise — with lots of hardcore thrills mixed in. Even though the WRECKS are no longer with us (sigh), songs like 'Couldn't Believe It' will live on in the annals of punk history. Mark my words.” Steve Spinali (MRR #2)

Punk's An Attitude (Jone "Jetson" Stebbins, 1981)
Swear to God I get sick of people's attitudes
And trying to figure them out
They talk about shit they don't understand
And dress to fit the trend
You can be accepted or rejected
in punk or society
You can play the role, I'll just be myself
Fuck people who think I'm a hippy
or a weekend punk
If they stopped to think they'd see
Punk is an attitude
Punk is an attitude, individuality is the key
Do what you want, don't care what they think
I guess some people just can't see…
Trendies suck!!!

16 Aug 2014

“‬‬What can I say about Meat Joy? This was my first adult band. This was my first band to gig a lot and make a record and go on tour and get reviews. This was my first adult love. I loved everybody in this band with all my heart. The three girls were me, Jamie Spidle (formerly of The Buffalo Gals), and Mellissa Cobb (formerly of Stick Figures). I’d seen Mellissa and Jamie perform in their respective bands and it was such a thrill to me to get to play with them. The boys were Tim Mateer and John Perkins, (who goes by John Hawkes now, due to the fact that there’s already a John Perkins in SAG.) The boys were founding members of Big State Theatre and they went on to star in In The West, which was a response to those Richard Avedon photos that were just so patronizing, really. In The West was made into a movie called Deep In The Heart (Of Texas) that you can rent if you want to explore this tangent further.‪‪”‬‬‬‬‬ ‪Gretchen Phillips‬

Gretchen Phillips

“Meat Joy was all about busting the fourth wall. We wanted everyone to do art, we wanted everyone to be creative. That’s still a cherished dream. Who knew what was going to happen at a Meat Joy show? We always began with some sort of improvisation and we always ended with a bunch of drumsticks and percussion instruments being handed out to the crowd. It was very important to me to release my first album before I was 21, and the Meat Joy album just squeaked under that timeline. We put this album out and then went on a tour of the Midwest. We had a blast, devouring Grain Belt beer and partying with the boys’ families in Alexandria, MN. I’ll never forget our show at The Blue Note in Columbus, OH. Our record had been out for two weeks and the college radio station had been playing it and the crowd was full of people I’d never seen before singing along to our songs. What a feeling! There’s nothing like that feeling, I tell you.”‬‬ Gretchen Phillips

Meat Joy

“Meat Joy had a great trick with merchandise on that one and only tour. We sold our hand-decorated albums for $5 and our hand-decorated T-shirts for $5. There was pretty much always an after-party and at this party we would pull out our blank T-shirts and our RIT dye and paints and get the people of this town to make the Meat Joy shirts we would sell at our next town. Crafting is such a great way to party. Every shirt unique and hand made. Unfortunately we had to break up. We swept up in the Austin Chronicle Music Poll for ’84-’85 and then had some stupid power struggles and broke up in the spring. It was sad. There has never been a band quite like Meat Joy since. It was a special time in music history, before the big labels discovered 'indie' music. You just looked in the back of Maximum Rock & Roll and found out who put on shows in Lawrence, KS and hoped that that venue was still open when your van pulled up. Ahhh, to be 21 and in Meat Joy again. Except for the pimples. They were a bummer.” Gretchen Phillips‬

“Meat Joy were Austin art punks, and their songs were noisy, folky, funny and pretty weird sometimes. In the mid-eighties, they recorded their only album (and used one of my photographs on the cover,) then broke up.” Pat Blashill‬‬

“It was a very, very democratic band. Rather unclassifiable. We would start every show with some kind of [improvisation]. We had a lot of dance, very theatrical… We’d roll around on the floor in garbage bags while films were projected onto us, and then we’d burst out of the bags.” ‬‬Gretchen Phillips‪‪

Meat Joy @ The Beach, Austin, 1985

“Austin's Meat Joy, a free-form aggregation of players who take turns on each others' instruments and encourage audience participation at their live shows, have blessed Texas with their first vinyl, Meat Joy (Flesh and Blood MT 522). Something of an aural collage, it includes stabs at styles ranging from folk to hardcore punk and punctuates them with homemade recordings, such as a tape off a telephone-answering machine. Its ingenuous approach is a refreshing change from the multitude of overproduced bands who seem to have forgotten their raison d'être: FUN! While some of this is plain silly, Meat Joy makes up for its musical amateurism with endearing panache.” Texas Monthly ‪(November 1984)

Yeastie Girlz
“Yeastie Girlz (their name obviously a take-off on the Beastie Boys) were a short-lived feminist rap trio comprised of members Jane, Cammie, and Kate, hailing from the fertile punk scene of Gilman St. in Berkeley, San Francisco. The trio released a lone 7" single in 1988, Ovary Action (issued on the independent Lookout! label), which contained a total of ten songs (only one of which stretches past the two-minute mark); some sample titles being 'Sperm Brain,' 'Talkin' Shit,' 'Orgasm Addict,' and 'Fuck Yerself.' Besides their single, not much else was heard from Yeastie Girlz.” Greg Prato

Bona Dish
“Bona Dish were a scratchy pop punk group from Hertfordshire villages, brought together by their love of the Velvets, Supremes and each other. They were cool, handsome and gorgeous. The songs are simple but at the same time complex. The two girls, two boy’s line-up added a tension that was both sexual and musically fragile. You felt it might all fall apart any second but it rarely did.” Captured Tracks